September 7, 2005
RE: Captioning for Movie Theatres
The Canadian Association of the Deaf is the national information, research, and community action organization of the 310,000 Canadians who are culturally and linguistically Deaf. The CAD is the oldest national-level disabled consumer association in this country.
It was the CAD who introduced captioning to Canada via our Captioned Films project in the early 1970s. This project, funded in part by the then-Department of Communications of the federal government, circulated Hollywood movies with open captioning to prove there was an audience in this country for captioning, and it led directly to the founding of the Canadian Captioning Development Agency to produce captioning for television programming.
Ironically, the wheel has come full circle and we find ourselves back in the same kind of situation in which the Captioned Films program ran, thirty years ago -- namely, focusing on the captioning of theatrical movies.
The difference now is that, firstly, the benefits of captioning have been proven beyond any doubt by thirty years of research, including the CAD's own research that indicated 10 million Canadians, or one-third of the total population, can directly benefit from captioning. Secondly, the right to equal access and equal quality of access to information and entertainment has been firmly established through human rights legislation and human rights tribunal decisions. And thirdly, there is now no longer any technological or financial excuse to justify a failure to provide full captioning access. High-quality captioning can be provided in movie theatres in an economical and cost-efficient manner.
The Canadian Association of the Deaf sees the efforts of Scott Simser, Nancy Barker, and Gary Malkowski as an extension of our ongoing, thirty-years' work on ensuring equal access for Deaf and hard of hearing Canadians. We support them in their endeavours.
Sincerely,
James Roots
Executive Director